The first of Those Girls….

Tamara is my oldest friend. We met at Eisner Camp in 1992 and, since we were a part of the select few who lived in Massachusetts (she’s from Brookline), we consistently saw each other over the school year. We bonded over Indigo Girls concerts, trips to The Garage in Harvard Square, the ceramic dalmation in her room that would scare the shit out of me every time I woke up and saw it staring at me, When Harry Met Sally, delicious lox and bagel spreads on Sunday mornings in her kitchen, a leopard print bikini that she had to wear when she was Mowgli in Bonim’s production of The Jungle Book (I think I was an elephant or something…the story of my life), the tiny cot in her bedroom that her mother still calls Lisa’s Bed, reconciling after our first fight on our trip to Israel when she threw a pair of socks at my head, bickering over who got doubles of the good pictures from Banquet, faking our way out of Instructional Swim, and that oh-so-awkward sermon about prostitutes the rabbi gave at her bat mitzvah. Seeing as how we were always in the same bunk and had the same amazing counselors (Abby, Liz, Dara, Stefi, etc.), our lives were molded in very much the same way; for example, neither of us were ashamed to have worn flannel shirts for 4 years…it was just the cool thing to do.

And so today I announce (because she’s not cool enough to have her own blog where she could do it) that Tamara, my enthusiastic color war general with an empowering clipboard, is engaged! What makes the fact that the proposal happened in the UK so cool, other than the fact that I get to embarrass her on my blog by bringing up the leopard bikini, is that I was the first one to find out. And by first one to find out, I mean the first one to physically be in their presence when they announced it (confiding to friends and your girlfriend’s father before the trip doesn’t count). This is great for me because I am ALWAYS the last person to find out about things; I didn’t know my sister was pregnant until I went to visit her and this baby wouldn’t leave her alone, forcing me to awkwardly ask, “Hey Stacey…It’s really great to see you, but what’s with the strange baby?”

So here is to Tamara and Alex - a future psychologist and future veterinarian who will undoubtedly live in a happy home that will never be without a bowl of grapes, a Philadelphia Flyers jersey, and a copy of The Great Muppet Caper.

Lisa: How can you possibly not like the movie Elf?
Alex: I don’t like raccoons.

Apart, they are freakish:
Tamara eating haggis (minutes later she complained of the “grittiness” of the chopped up sheep hearts)

Alex trying to fit an entire loaf of bread in his mouth

But together they are perfect…

The one where Lisa attempts to take a shower

Here's a wonderful story for you where you will not only get to picture me naked in a tub, but, well, you'll get to laugh too (those things should NOT be caused by one another).

On our drive up to Scotland from London, we stayed in a little town called Durham. We didn't make plans to stay there, it was just the closest place around at the time our eyes started to get droopy. I awoke early Saturday morning and went for a lovely run in and around town (Saturday mornings before 7 am is truly like living in another world...everything is so serenely beautiful and eerily quiet). When I got back to the hotel and went to take a shower, I tried to be very quiet so as not to wake Tamara and Alex from their slumber. So there I am in the bathroom, yes naked, waiting to get in the shower when I am faced with this plumbing set-up:

You'll have to excuse my Microsoft Paint skills, but this is the best I could do. The top circle is the shower head. The middle bar is a bar with a knob on either end. The red and blue circles are other knobs. The thing that looks like Barbra Streisand's nose is the tub faucet.

In this case, what would you think? Which knobs would you turn? Well, if you're anything like me, you turned the red knob first. And boom. Out came scalding hot water from the tub faucet. Okay, okay. Not a terrible start. I turned the blue knob a bit to minimize the chance of burning my skin while I continued my Shower Lesson In The Nude. And so now there is a gushing of tepid water pouring from the tub faucet. But how do I get the water to come from the shower head? Oh, I know. I'll turn one of the higher-up knobs. Yes. Good idea. So I turn the knob on the left. The stream of water from the tub remains the same, but now there is also a freezing cold spray coming from the shower head. Well, that certainly wasn't right. So I turned that one off. Then I turned the right higher-up knob. Same exact thing. So then I did a combination of the two higher-up knobs but with always the same result. How in the hell? This went on for 8 minutes. Alex later told me he could hear me audibly say "What?!" from the bedroom. I would have said way more than that, but again, I was trying to be quietly polite.

After those very chilly 8 minutes (for, by now, the sweat had cooled on my body and the cold floor tiles weren't helping matters), I gave up. But I couldn't NOT clean myself because I had just run for 70 minutes and was stinky. So I only had one option left. I would have to take a bath. I put the plug in the drain and waited for the warm water to fill the tub (since that was the only faucet I knew how to draw forth warm water). But I was so cold while I was waiting!!! So I got in the tub when there was maybe an inch of water covering the bottom. And there I am sitting in tortoise pose splashing the water over my back, face, and hair EXACTLY the way Will Ferrell did in Elf when he was forced to shower in the elfin bathroom. Even as I was doing it, I realized what a ridiculous, sad sight it must have been.

But here's the kicker. When the tub finally filled, I went to turn off the faucets and as I did, scorching water started spraying out of the showerhead onto me. It took everything I had not to scream Janet Leigh style. I quickly undid whatever the hell it was I had just done. Thinking, thinking, thinking....ah, yes. Okay. Bottom knobs are for the tub. Top knobs are for the shower. There is only so much hot water so that if the bottom hot water knob is on, the upper hot knob will still create cold water. Turn OFF the tub hot water and voila - boiling water from the shower head. If you're confused then I have proved my point. Shower systems in the United Kingdom are absurd. One handle would suffice; turn it to the left for hot, turn to the right for cold. Easy. Simple. Why physically and mentally scar your tourists with inane systems?